Description

The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. This account of the East Indian travels of John Huyghen van Linschoten, originally published in the Netherlands in 1596 and translated into English in 1598, was published by the society in 1885 using an edited version of the early translation, supplemented with explanatory notes. It provides a rich source of information about Portuguese trade with the East Indies, as well as descriptions of the fauna, flora and indigenous peoples of the regions he visited, from the Azores and St Helena to Java and Sumatra.